Acclaimed Piano Duo to Perform Concert Oct. 7

Quick Facts

Elaine Greenfield and Janice Thompson met in 1990 at the Adamant Music School in Adamant, Vt. The pianists will perform an all-French program.

Elaine Greenfield (left) and Janice Thompson

ROCK HILL, S.C. - For pianists Elaine Greenfield and Janice Meyer Thompson, known as the Transcontinental Piano Duo, four hands are better than two.

Greenfield and Thompson will bring their unique musical rapport to Winthrop on Tuesday, Oct. 7, at 7:30 p.m. with a Friends of the Conservatory-sponsored concert in Barnes Recital Hall. The evening’s all-French program will include piano four-hands and duo piano works by Debussy, Bizet, Poulene, Faure and Ravel.

The pianists met in 1990 as faculty members of the Adamant Music School in Adamant, Vt., and struck up a musical partnership that continues to transcend their geographical challenges. Thompson teaches piano at Arizona State University, while Greenfield keeps a private studio in South Burlington, Vt., where she lives. Over the years, the duo has performed in Arizona, California, Ohio, Wisconsin, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York and Massachusetts.

Because they live on opposite sides of the U.S., Greenfield and Thompson get together to “rehearse intensely” a few days before each performance. Over the summer, they also worked together in Vermont, planning the program and rehearsing several new pieces.

Still, Greenfield said she and Thompson are “so in tune with each other” that they “know how the other person is going to relate.” That compatibility, she added, is part of what makes the musical partnership so fulfilling.

“It’s rewarding to make music with another person – sharing ideas, listening to the sound together, molding the piece with somebody else and having it be a collaborative effort,” Greenfield said.

Greenfield, an independent musician and a Music Teachers National Association Master Teacher, serves as a faculty member at the Adamant Music School and the Crane School of Music Summer Piano program (SUNY Potsdam). She has performed at Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall, Steinway Hall, Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., Boston’s Gardner Museum and additional locations across the U.S. Greenfield studied professionally at the Crane School of Music, and her graduate studies took her to the Peabody Conservatory and New York. Founder of Greenfield Piano Associates and a founding performer of the Vermont Contemporary Music Ensemble, she is the artistic director/coordinator of concert events for St. Paul’s Cathedral Arts in Burlington, Vt.

A professor of piano at the Arizona State University School of Music in Tempe, Ariz., Thompson is the founding director of the ASU Piano Prep and Conservatory programs and coordinator of the piano pedagogy offerings at ASU. She earned her doctor of music degree at Northwestern University in Illinois. She has traveled across North America, Europe, Russia and Asia. As part of The Kent Camerata, Thompson traveled to China, where she presented recitals and master classes in conservatories in Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin.

Concert admission is $10 for the general public and free to Friends of the Conservatory.